Igor Butman: The lack of emotions will not allow artificial intelligence to write a musical masterpiece

09.08.2019

“Artificial intelligence does not have emotions and does not make mistakes in music that can become a new trend or inspiration”, said Igor Butman, the Honored Artist of Russia, and President of the Authors’ Council at the Russian Authors’ Society (RAO), at the Sochi Jazz Festival, answering a question about attitude to neural music.

According to the musician, the creations of the neural network will not be able to compare with the works of truly talented composers.

“Why do we need artificial intelligence? It will never have emotions. Sometimes it happens that a finger jumped out or a pencil and wrote the wrong note when you write without a piano, then you listen, and this is better than what I came up with. Even a mistake can serve as some new trend or inspiration for something. That is why artificial intelligence is, perhaps, for those people who invented this intelligence, for them it is like some kind of challenge; for me personally, of course, to write music,” Butman said.

The artist added that, despite the growing interest in technologies, it is important to search for new talents, provide musicians with the opportunity to express themselves. In the framework of Sochi Jazz Festival, it is planned to arrange a competition for musicians.

“Maybe someday artificial intelligence will learn to make mistakes by accident and feel something. And since it can’t do so at preset, we will wait and raise new composers, new Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Charlie Parker, Lucas Wellington, Georgiev, Garanyan,” Butman said.